Rashid Khan bowled a perfect ball to Sameer Rizvi.
When Rashid Khan turns his leg-break at pace, he can be deemed in form. Once his leg-breaks become effective, a lot of things become easier for Rashid; his googlies have always been a massive threat, but it’s the leg-spin that made them impossible to play during his peak years. Saying peak years will be a stretch at the moment, but he definitely bowled one of his better spells against DC.
Sameer Rizvi, an in-form spin-hitter with two match-winning knocks on his back, experienced it first-hand. Before that, rewind to his previous match patterns against RHBs, KL Rahul and Pathum Nissanka. Rashid bowled six googlies and as many leg spins to them, showing a clear liking for drafting more leg spins against right-handers since he extracted turn right from the start.
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After dismissing Nitish Rana via a googly on the previous ball, Rashid Khan, along with Gujarat Titans’ captain Shubman Gill, plotted a perfect first-ball plan against Sameer Rizvi. The skipper had an extensive chat with Rashid, where Gill was probably asking his trump card to deliver a googly first up. However, he set his field to give the impression that the spinner was about to deliver a leg-spin.
He put in a slip for the right-hander and also brought in a cover fielder, who was standing slightly towards the point region. All this indicated that he’d bowl a leg-spin, which would turn away from the batter. However, Rashid Khan instead sneaked in a quick googly bowled with precision: pitching just outside the off-stump and coming in sharply to crash through the bat and pad.
His previous dismissal of Rana was also a googly, but it was bowled a tad quicker and outside the off-stump. For Rizvi, Rashid deliberately slowed his pace and delivered around 6 km/h slower than the last one, which meant the ball had more time to turn on a surface that had ample turn for the spinner. In fact, it was the slowest delivery of the over and the fifth-slowest overall of his spell.
Rizvi tried to drive it towards the mid-off by covering the line, which confirmed that he expected it to be a leg-spin and went to play with the turn. He played straighter to get past that cover fielder just planted, which was again part of the plan. GT wanted him to play away from the body and straight through the line.
That would automatically generate a gap between the bat and pad, and he couldn’t adjust his bat angle at the last moment. Rizvi was probably right to play for a leg-spin, as everything pointed towards a leg-spin. Only for Rashid Khan to weave his magic with a sharp googly.
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